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Vic child protection workers 'burning out'

Victoria's child protection case workers are so overloaded many are burning out and it would cost more than $1.4 billion to tackle the crisis, according to a new report.

Practitioners are so stressed by workloads and inadequate organisational support in 2016/17, half of WorkCover claims were related to mental health, a Victorian Auditor-General report shows.

"(Department of Health and Human Services) is not meeting its obligation to ensure that (child protection practitioners) are maintaining good mental health," Auditor-General Andrew Greaves wrote in his report released on Thursday.

"The primary risk affecting CPPs' management of their mental health is unreasonable workloads."

The department needs about twice as many CPPs to make workloads sustainable, the report continued.

Between 2010 and 2016, the number of CPPs grew by 26 per cent, but that has not been enough to keep pace with a 121 per cent increase in child protection reports.

"Its most recent estimates are that about $352 million is needed annually over the next four years to address the workforce shortage," Mr Greaves said.

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Staff reported suffering bullying from the judicial system and from the people they are trying to help.

"I regularly work 80 hours a week and have to set my alarm at 4am to start work in case I get caught up in another urgent matter which I had not previously featured into my diary," one worker told the auditor-general.

The report makes seven recommendations and the DHHS accepted all of them.

"We're turning this around - we've funded 610 extra child protection workers since 2014 so that vulnerable families who need help can get it sooner," Families and Children Minister Jenny Mikakos said.

But the Community and Public Sector Union secretary Karen Batt says workload has long been a significant issue and the subject of a many reports.

"There's enough reports and evidence so it's time to focus on the fix and the fix is managing the work allocation," she said.

Ms Batt said the union and department were working together on a mental health and well-being project and are in discussions on strategies to better manage vicarious and cumulative trauma brought about by the constant exposure to child abuse.

The report was released on the same day the state Labor government championed an improvement in wait times for calls to its after-hours children-at-risk hotline.

On average, callers to the After-Hours Child Protection Emergency Service now wait just 25 seconds compared to an average wait time of seven minutes in 2014, with the improvement attributed to better technology and more staff.